


Break Point

by DustToDust



Category: The Evil Within (Video Game)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-04
Updated: 2015-09-05
Packaged: 2018-02-24 01:57:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2564033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DustToDust/pseuds/DustToDust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every person has one. Has some thing that can be used to break them, and it's so much easier to find it now than it has ever been before. So very easy now to find the secret break points that interest him the most.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> And the only [somewhat] consensual relationship I can think of between Ruvik and Seb would happen if Seb was a masochist. Doesn't stop me from liking the pairing more than is healthy, but, yeah. I'm poking at stuff right now. Wondering.

There is no guessing to do anymore. 

No need to sit back and watch them go through the tediousness of their lives just for a single glimpse of that one thing. A sign of something to turn a wild stab in the dark into an educated guess. That thing that every single person tried to hide in the recesses of their mind. That secret desire, the unspoken shame, or a hidden guilt.

Little hidden things that they won't talk about out loud. Things that can be used to lure them in, to unsettle them, to _break_ them.

That thing is different for each person, and finding it had always been a rather boring process even when he was able to _encourage_ it to slip out. It's worth it to seek out those triggers, those buttons to push. Watching the expression on their faces when he does makes it all worth it. He can never get enough of watching the fear and slow realization of what he's doing to them as he breaks them down.

Not having to guess or watch so closely now is one of the few benefits to his situation.

Each new subject that gets thrown in, each new person they decide to get rid of, they all come in and they're open books to him. Ruvik can sift through their minds with his perpetually burnt and aching fingers. Combing though their memories, their very self immediately. 

It makes it so much easier to tailor things for each of his new playthings. Starting them on the path to their destruction before they can learn enough to be wary of his careful plans and traps.

It's takes work but the end results are satisfying.

Four more new minds are sent in as sacrificial lambs and Ruvik touches them each in turn. He's close, so very close, to completing his goal so it's no surprise to brush along the unnaturally smooth mind of a person who has been almost completely erased. One of their specially prepared people that always prove to be annoying. There's not enough of them there for Ruvik to control, and all he has to rely on against them is physical violence. Something that isn't too hard in this world, but is always unsatisfying on a personal level for him.

There's a hint of warmth in the empty mind when he pulls away. Attachments forming with the men the woman is with. There might be something there he can use later. It's obvious they've let this agent exist for a little too long. They get less effective the longer they're allowed to remember and feel. It's the nature of most human beings.

The men are a different type all together. Common and mostly unsurprising. One has no true secrets to use, nothing interesting he can play with, but his mind is weak and Ruvik knows he will be the first to succumb to the stress of STEM. With hardly any effort on Ruvik's own part to push him along that path.

There's a spark of something in one of the other two that is interesting. A spark of understanding that is all instinct and buried under leather. Ruvik examines the spark that's hidden by iron walls of denial. Joseph Oda has a gift and Ruvik already has plans to use that gift, and his fear of it, against him. His interest in the man is muted though. Ruvik would like the chance to open the man's physical body up to examine him and see what makes him the way he is, but he won't get that chance. All of these people will have to be destroyed before he's free.

The last one is far more interesting in the context of this world. There's a banked rage in him that is familiar and licked through with fire. The loss of a family that has hardened him despite almost destroying him. It will make him last longer in this world. Durability makes the chase fun, but it's not this that draws Ruvik's attention. 

It's the smothered thread of desire that unfurls under his attentive touch. A yearning that's been all but destroyed for something that the man, _Sebastian_ , has nearly killed out of shame. A desire for something that he's never had before and thinks he should not want.

Pain.

Ruvik smiles as he uncovers a memory of a confused teenage boy afraid of the images that come too easily to mind to make him squirm with shameful want. Images and thoughts buried so deep they were nearly destroyed. Nearly.

He feels a sharp regret as the four settle more firmly into his world --three of them completely unaware that they are not in their own world anymore-- that he won't have the time to properly draw those memories out. Slowly and fully until _Sebastian_ realizes what it is he's always wanted. That what he wants can all be found here, now. That there is no one who can give that pain to him the way Ruvik can. The struggle of long denial against his deepest desire would be sweet to see. Almost as good as the point, the one that's inevitable, where he would break and give into his wants.

Would even beg for it.

Perhaps he can see about sparing the Detective. As long as the man doesn't interfere too much with Ruvik's plans. Breaking him in might be a good way to test out the limitations of his new vessel when he escapes this world after all.

Ruvik retreats from their minds and starts to craft and settle things into place for these new additions. Altering what is already in motion the slightest bit, and allowing for a little.... Extra time to spend watching them all, and maybe one in particular.


	2. Chapter 2

Poor little Joseph is so very, very careful making his way through the twisted halls of the hospital. Ruvik paces him as he methodically moves from room to room. Unseen but present in a way that's putting the man on edge. His senses tuned so finely to the things that can't be seen that Ruvik only has to be present to set them off.

He scurries like a rat. Eyes bright and alert as he sniffs out anything worth finding. Ruvik indulges him with tidbits. Scraps of information pulled from the broken minds of the people who came before. Some relevant, most not. 

Joseph picks them all up. His keen eyes and senses zeroing in on them without fail even as his mind starts to shudder under Ruvik's constant presence. His mind is strong, but not strong enough.

Ruvik pulls some of the twisted remnants of people into the hospital halls for the man to deal with and leaves him. He tracks down the driver outside who is already buckling under the strain of the STEM system. He's pacing and muttering. Hand swiping under his nose occasionally to stop the few drops of blood that leak out. His sense of self is already under assault, and his background gives him no reference to stand firm under it. There's no sport to be had with him.

The woman, Kidman if her scarce thoughts are to be believed, is exactly where he expects her. She's made contact with Jimenez --a truly unexpected bonus, and Ruvik would dearly love to know who the pest angered to be thrown to Ruvik's slim mercies without him even knowing it-- and the boy.

Leslie shakes and mutters repetitive consonants to himself. Closing his eyes tight as Ruvik walks by him. "Hush," Ruvik says and runs a hand over the unkempt hair before turning to the arguing agents, "they don't see me, they can't protect you like I can."

"...protect me... ...protect me... ...protect me!" The boy quails under the assault of the words aimed right at his naive sense of trust, but his mind holds annoyingly firm. No matter, these new players will only help him break Leslie and make him into the perfect vessel.

"-we must leave, now," Kidman says and it's interesting how she isn't telling Jimenez where he is or why. The doctor is expendable now, and Ruvik wonders if he has the time to make him aware of that fact. That the people he sold Ruvik out to no longer need him. It would be so sweet to feel that realization bloom in his shaking mind.

"My patients-" the man protests even though his mind is more focused on the work and data he has in his office than any of the trash he uses to further Ruvik's own research.

"Ruvik can reach you," Kidman says firmly and that stops the man dead. He knows enough to fear what he's made Ruvik into, even though he doesn't fully realize what that is. Not yet. "We must leave!"

"It can't be him. It can't. Leslie," Jimenez reaches for the boy who flinches from his touch. Already knowing that the doctor is no friend to trust. "Come now, let's follow the... officer."

Ruvik pulls away some of the pressure on Jimenez's mind. Gives it some rest as he forcefully guides the boy away. It won't do to have him break too soon.

Kidman takes the rear. Watching the back, sides, and front with eyes even sharper than Joseph's. Her minds is still rather blank and he gets nothing from her other than a great need to get Leslie out. To pull him away from the collective enough to safely disconnect him.

They're aware enough of his plans to try and interfere. Frustrating, but expected. He doesn't think much of this organization. They're old and vast, and seem too close to the people father used to deal with for Ruvik's tastes. He'll keep a close eye on Kidman and crush her as soon as he can glean a little more from her mind.

A stirring catches him then, and Ruvik goes to it. 

Sebastian is awake and assessing the slaughter room Ruvik left him in. Watching the butcher with grim dark eyes. It's a surprise that the man chooses the shadows and flight over force. In Ruvik's experience a man of his size and job usually goes for brute force first, and maybe thinks about the logical consequences of that only afterwards.

There's caution in his mind as he eases his way out of the room far more easily than Ruvik anticipated. He'd wanted the man to have to work a bit more for it than that. 

No matter.

The trip wire solidifies into place seconds before Sebastian walks right into it, "Shit!"

Ruvik smiles at the way terror seems to clear the man's confused mind. The very real danger of death propelling him into flight. He focuses so intently on his own survival that the pain from the chainsaw slashing down his leg is a surprise.

He screams and Ruvik smiles as he pulls his creature back from finishing the man off like he was made to. The pain is bright and exquisite in Sebastian's mind. The surprise of it had caught him off guard and thrown off his sharp focus, his iron clad denial just enough. 

Ruvik circles him to see how it looks on the man, and the hints of pain on him as he climbs to his feet are nice. 

"Where's the exit?" Sebastian questions himself or the world at large as he stubbornly limps through the tunnels. Not as slowed down by the bleeding wound he hasn't bothered trying to bandage in any way. His voice is rough and Ruvik wonders how much pain he will have to put the man through before he notices the reaction for what it is.

The end of the creatures he woke for Joseph draws him away, and he sets the path for Sebastian to follow before the man gets far. Something a bit more challenging. Just enough to warm him up for what's ahead.

His main plan needs him to focus more on Joseph for a bit. The man is a danger to his plan of cornering Leslie, and keeping him where Ruvik needs him. The boy is perceptive in a way similar to Joseph, and letting them meet will undermine all he has set up.

"Keep going, Sebastian," Ruvik says though no one hears him as the world bends around him. Bringing him where he wants to go with long practiced ease.


	3. Chapter 3

"This is insane," Joseph mutters to fill the silence.

It’s a defensive tactic that people use when almost all audio stimuli are removed. They fill it with a constant sound to make themselves not feel so alone, to place themselves solidly in the stillness that would drown them. Focusing on their own breathing or making repeated comments.

Joseph resorts to the last as he barrels through the same hallway. Again and again and again. A continuous loop that has already made the man --who prides himself on his logic-- break down and scream at the impossibility of it. It was a delightful sound of despair that’s ultimately just a taste of what is going to be in store for him.

Joseph holds tight to his precious control now. Refusing to give in again but Ruvik can already feel it slipping from him even as the cityscape outside cracks and crumbles. Ruvik keeps track of the erratic ambulance and the fear of those inside even as he changes the hall abruptly. Allowing something new in so that when Joseph slams through the door that has been the signal to start the loop again he’s unprepared for it.

"Urg!" Joseph slams hard into the brick wall only a few inches away from the door. It's enough to stop his forward momentum and daze him as the room expands. Taking away the wall supporting him and toppling him onto the floor that's made of broken shards of glass.

The reaction is immediate.

"No!" Joseph jerks his hands, out to instinctively break his fall, up and away from the shards. Driving his elbows and knees into the mess instead. The damage is already done though. His gloves, so precious and needed, are torn. 

Clean cuts that expose flashes of the skin beneath. His hands are undamaged, but that’s not the point. Not the issue that makes the man lurch to his feet, and his mind light up with a horror that wasn’t there even when he was cornered by things he could not see but could still touch him. Still _hurt_ him. "No, no, no-!"

The cuts are small and will not take a lot of work to split further. It’s a danger to him. To his senses and sanity. For him to not be inundated with everything lurking around this world. And that is more terrifying than anything else Ruvik can create for the man to face.

Ruvik smiles and the door disappears, the glass sinks into the floor, and his worst experiments in this world rise up in its place. These are the ones who have lost themselves the most and are now nothing more than tormented memories and base instinct. The weak ones who broke so disappointingly fast, and whose memories are the most fragmented.

They reach for the man with bone fingers and festering skin. They reach with all their broken edges and the gaping emptiness in their psyche. There’s not enough bullets in the officer’s gun to fend them all off, but he tries anyway. There's not enough energy in his limbs to fight when he runs out, but he tries anyway. It just does not help him at all as they shuffle closer. Reaching out without their usual violence because Ruvik wills it that way.

The touch of them through the cuts in the gloves is more than enough.

The shock of the first touch rockets through Joseph’s mind with all the horror and despair of the thing that used to be a woman. Her clawed fingers tearing at his gloves and giving him glimpses of her last moments as an individual being. The helplessness as all she knew was torn asunder, and she accepted the fact that she would never escape. The bright and unending terror as she realized what was going to happen to her, what Ruvik had planned for her. The wretched pain as she slowly but steadily sawed open her own neck with rather dull knife.

It's overwhelming, the detail is absurdly intense. More so than when it happened to the woman. The amplification of the event through poor little Joseph's mind is interesting. Ruvik wonders if that's a control issue, as the man clearly has none at all, or if that is simply the way his ability works. The over amplification a way of ensuring that all the information can be gathered. It's an imprecise sense relying heavily on empathy and his studies haven't focused much on that.

"Get off!" Joseph finds the energy to kick out. Shoving the crowd coming behind the woman back for a brief second he can’t use to do more than collapse back on a wall, wedging himself in a corner to protect two sides. The echoes of the woman’s last sane moments make it impossible for him to do more than fight to keep his knees from buckling.

It’s fascinating. Watching and feeling the terror and despair from two sides at the same time. Ruvik pushes the remnants of a man diagnosed as borderline forward and Joseph _screams_. The onslaught of rage and suicidal tendencies is more vivid now through Joseph’s mind than it was when the man broke. When he was forcefully brought into the collective consciousness of the broken minds.

Ruvik lets those memories and personalities wash over Joseph and watches as the man reacts in pain. Mental anguish and pain that is as immediate as any physical sensation. It increases with each touch, each one that piles on afterwards adding their own miseries to the ones already rolling over his mind.

There’s no thought anymore in poor little Joseph as his mind shudders and buckles under the attack. Spiraling down further and further as more and more of the creatures touch him. Seemingly hungry for the vividness of their former selves they can feel through him. The scraps of what they once were in the screaming and insensible man they’re holding down.

"Such a pity," Ruvik tells the man as his minds starts to shut down in defense. His screams cut off abruptly as unconsciousness ends the assault. It won’t help him in the long run, but temporarily it makes the creatures lose interest. With Ruvik suppressing their murderous instinct there is nothing else to hold their short attention. He reaches down and picks up one arm. Carefully not touching the exposed skin of Joseph's hand. "You would have been a delight to open up."

A true puzzle to figure out, but he’s a threat right now. A useful one. Ruvik steps back and with a thought sends him away for later. He won’t come back to on his own, and right now the torment he’s absorbed from touch alone will keep him docile. Good enough for the moment.


	4. Chapter 4

The collective relief when the ambulance reaches a tunnel --laughably safe-- is rather funny. Leslie and Kidman both know what they were running from, but the others can only think of earthquakes. There's no logical reason why they should feel safer from one of those underground, but they do.

It's a little disappointing. Ruvik hasn't actually started trying to break them down yet. They have no reason to be this grateful for the reprieve. Not yet.

Leslie cowers despite the assurances of Jimenez and Kidman. Despite the reassuring presence of living and mostly unbroken people around him. The boy is wise in his own way though and knows better than all of the others what is coming.

"They can’t save you," Ruvik tells the boy the truth, because truth is something he can understand. "They’ll use you and betray you just like everyone else. Like always. You know that."

"F-fine," the boy’s nearly colorless eyes raise slowly up to him and go a little wide in fear. Not at any perceived threat Ruvik may have for the boy. Ruvik has made it very clear to Leslie that he only wants one thing from him, and hurting him is not part of it. Not unless Leslie forces him to.

The fear is not for himself but the others with him. He still cares about people. Unbelievable after everything that has happened to him in his life, but there it is. Leslie's condition really makes him far too naive.

"Fall," Leslie starts to chant, trying his best in his own way to warn and protect those who think they’re saving him. His unnatural perception letting him know what is coming next.

No one hears him, or they all do, they just don’t pay any attention to the ravings of a patient as withdrawn as Leslie. Ruvik reaches out. It takes so very little effort to finish breaking the man driving. Just the barest touch against his mind and he's gone. Succumbing with a jerk that slams the vehicle around.

Ruvik leaves the ambulance and watches as it skids through the tunnel that could be endless if he willed it. _If_.

He has something particular for Jimenez in mind though. A special treat that the man doesn't know is here and has been here for a good long while. His own fault for not making sure his dear brother wasn't making enemies of the people holding his leash. The agent can explain that mess to the man. A fine show to watch in exchange for separating the two from the boy and Sebastian.

He has some very different plans in mind for them. Separate plans.

Ruvik ends the tunnel and the road. Connecting the empty air to the area he has carefully prepared. "Fall!"

The spike of pure terror from everyone dulls even before it begins. Cutting out as he feels two of them slip away from the ambulance in a way that shouldn't be possible at all. Ruvik snarls as he reaches out reflexively for them both. He snags one for a brief moment, and feels the burn of banked rage that is becoming familiar, but the other disappears completely. Not just from his reach but from the system entirely.

So that’s their game.

Ruvik had wondered why they sent their agent in with an ignorant escort, and it’s clear now that the cops were all meant to be a smoke screen. Kidman isn’t so deeply set in the STEM system, and can be pulled out safely at any time someone on the outside pleases. A tactic that will make it very hard for him to keep Leslie where he needs the boy if she can manage to get him to let go just enough to be pulled out.

Fury simmers and the world reacts with flames. He pulls it back fast though at a sharp cry from the boy who is fleeing the crashed ambulance. Unharmed despite the crash, the flames, and the creature clawing its way out of the driver's seat. The boy runs and Ruvik lets him because the further he goes the closer he gets to where Ruvik needs him and the further he goes from where Kidman needs to get him out.

She will be back. He has no doubt of that, and he will be ready to deal with her then. There will be no more plans for her except for death.

Sebastian hovers at the edge of the system. Not totally out like Kidman is, and it's unclear if that is Ruvik's doing or _theirs_. His presence is in a well protected partition that Ruvik hasn’t noticed before. Something that wasn’t created by him, and something that doesn’t belong at all.

Jimenez stumbles out of the ambulance in a different area. On his way to see his brother but none of that is as important right now. Not with this foreign intrusion he can’t see or touch threatening the world he created.

He paces it off. Examining it with every sense he has and some that aren’t his. The partition is part of the world, but the will governing it isn’t his. Ruvik growls and prods at the boundaries. It feel like the same boundaries that define his world from the real one. Perhaps this is why he hadn’t noticed it before, because he only knows it is not the limits of his own prison due to Sebastian.

The man’s turmoil is just getting started and Ruvik's been keeping a close eye on it. Carefully pushing threads of his own will into the man to aid that observation, and it is this that lets him know Sebastian is on the other side of the barrier.

When was this made? Why was this made? Ruvik snarls and lashes out. Raking against the barrier with a physical attack, and pushing against it with a mental attack because the collective is all mostly mental. The barriers shudder in a gratifying way and Ruvik smiles at the sign of weakness.

The barrier here is not as absolute as they would like it to seem. Just like the ones keeping him in the STEM system. They exist, but with enough focused attention he can reach beyond it for a brief time. Mostly blindly but the effects are something he can feel.

Sebastian jolts and confusion and pain play across his mind as his presence slips away and back to where Ruvik wants him. In the ambulance on the same track that Leslie had followed earlier.

Ruvik can feel the faint ripple of Kidman returning as well. Elsewhere, where _they_ want her to be. Tricky.

Ruvik watches Sebastian stumble blindly for a few steps. Coughing up smoke and flinching from the heat behind him. He'd planned to follow the man, to alter things subtly to get him to a more interesting frame of mind, but Kidman's leaving and returning needs to be dealt with.


	5. Chapter 5

He finds her lurking in the halls of the hospital, very near to the base of the lighthouse. Her mind still blank and empty of anything except worryingly solid plan of escaping. He watches the boy run, unharmed by anything in his path. Watches Jimenez follow close with a pleased curl, and Sebastian shortly after. Their paths twisted together in ways they will never realize aren't the same place.

Sebastian slips away. Often enough for Ruvik to notice the pattern. He trails his fingers against the barrier but doesn't push again as Kidman searches. There's something in that leaving that he can use to his advantage against her. A theory presents itself in his mind and he wants to test it out.

Ruvik stalks after her. Throwing obstacles and opponents in her way. She's skilled. The fighting barely slows her down. The obstacles take her more time to work around, but ultimately do very little to deter her. Ruvik can see why they sent her in. She's highly efficient.

She's also compromised.

The glasses crunch under her foot and one of the lenses goes skidding away. They're distinctive even before she bends down to pick the ruined things up.

"Joseph?" It's gratifying to feel the way worry flashes through her mind, to know he was right. Followed immediately by concern and the struggle of completing her mission as it goes head to head with the guilt that's been slowly growing as Ruvik started exerting his hold on them..

They allowed her too much time with the men she was sent in with. She's formed some sort of connection with them both. A connection of time that her mind has silently started turning into something more. She feels responsible for them being brought here and how she reacts next to that could be her undoing.

Kidman hesitates --Ruvik dismisses the slight interest in the fact she thinks of herself as that name and nothing else-- torn between what she was told to do and the nagging need to find the man. Ruvik pushes her firmly in one direction and she jerks at the sound of shots echoing through the halls. Faint and far off. The direct opposite direction of the way she was going.

Away from her objective.

The cold and clear lines of her orders reverberate in her mind and Ruvik doesn't try to influence her any more. It's always best if the decision is entirely theirs. Ruvik can use it against them far more efficiently that way.

"Dammit," Kidman hisses and throws the glasses away. Her face contorts in a frown and she takes one step forward before jerking to a stop. Her shoulder hunch and Ruvik can feel it as her cold certainty wavers and gives way to something warmer and less rigid.

Their precious little agent isn't as perfect as they had hoped.

Kidman spins with another curse and she's running. Gun out and ready as she races to save someone who is already beyond her ability to save. Ruvik severs all but one route to the lighthouse after she's sufficiently far enough away. He has no doubt that she will be pulled out and placed back even closer if he doesn't leave at least some way to get there. The path he chooses is the most difficult, but it's not nearly as difficult as the one he sets her on now. Chasing the ghost of one of her partners through the deadly halls that wont end. Not for her.

The key to this one lies with her partners and wearing her down physically. There's not enough in her to wear her down mentally. Not yet, but he can at least encourage what little is there to grow stronger roots. Roots that will grow insidiously and crack the walls that protect her now.

"You can't save him," Ruvik tells her as he shows himself. She can't hurt him. Not right now, and she knows it. She holds her shot but the gun stays trained on him. "You can't stop me. Not here and not out there."

"Yes, I can," Kidman refutes and starts to slowly circle around him. Step by step as she starts to breathe. Measured and controlled. A very precise pattern that effects her mind, and her vitals. A clever little way to signal extraction. "You will be stopped, Ruvik."

He laughs as she starts to go. He reaches out then, but not for her. He reaches out for Sebastian. Sinks his fingers into the man's mind and gets a vivid flash of him. His thighs burning from a long controlled crouch, and the relentless jerk as a knife sinks through a skull. The taste of foul blood on closed lips and the smell of rot as the body falls silently to the ground.

Kidman gasps as she's jerked back. Her extraction ended before it could take her too far and Ruvik opens his eyes to sneer at her. She's blinking over the gun and not shaking even as her gut clenches in unease.

"You _can't_ ," Ruvik laughs again and leaves her to the halls and ghosts.

One last desperate attempt on _their_ part to stop him and he's already made her ineffective. Using the others as a mask was clever. Too clever. To use them they had to link her to their minds first, and now all he has to do to keep her here is retain his hold on them. On even just one of the men.

"You're not nearly as intelligent as you think you are," Ruvik tells the men and women who can't hear him. The leeches that took his work for their own, but can _never_ go beyond what he has already given them. He laughs again and looks forward to seeing the realization on their faces when he leaves this world.


	6. Chapter 6

For being the most interesting of the lot, Ruvik hasn’t paid Sebastian as much attention. Kidman's unexpected disappearances and entries have unfortunately taken up most of the allowances he calculated for.

Most but not all.

"No!" Jimenez screams in panic as Sebastian steps forward. A gut reaction panic to being left alone prompting the outburst. Suspicion is heavy on the man and his disbelief is fading into certainty of what is happening. He's realizing that he's been betrayed, the evidence of his brother's fate all that was needed to shake his belief that all was right in the world. "Don't follow him!"

Sebastian ignores him and is focused entirely on Ruvik. It's easy to use that focus to pull him away. To get him isolated for a while so Ruvik can really reach deep into his mind.

Tiredness weighs Sebastian down and his mind is more open than ever now that he's been in the system this long. His body aches from injuries old and new that distract him only slightly. Ruvik finds more than he had seen before, and he finds things that were _not_ there at the beginning. The chemistry of his mind is altered, changed from what it was before and more so than the STEM system can account for.

Their doing.

It's intriguing to see these changes, but they're very basic. Things he was doing on his own long before he conceived of STEM. Minor enhancements of the mind that hadn't been nearly enough to compensate for the damage of his body so he'd abandoned the study. Of course they would steal even that.

Ruvik walks up to the man and sinks his fingers into his rough hair. Pulling as much as carding through the strands as his mind shudders under Ruvik's mental touch. The slight pain grounds the man, gives his mind something to gratefully latch onto as Ruvik starts to peer more closely into his memories. Safe in the knowledge that the boy is moving away and the threats are contained for the moment.

The stench of cheap vodka and tequila saturates some of the man’s memories, and the signs of it litter the worldscape around him. Empty bottles keeping the rage under Sebastian’s skin in check with the numbing haze of inebriation. The opposite reaction of what Ruvik has observed in many heavy drinkers. Ruvik peels away the lingering depressant effect that still lingers while the man stands dazed.

He touches the nerves and feels the faint echo of all Sebastian's wounds flaring up. Every bruise and gash welling up in one beautifully bright flare of pain that makes the man gasp. Overwhelmed by the feeling he still denies he craves.

He'd be fascinating to pull apart. A diversion from his task and his studies, but no less fascinating for the purely selfish reasons behind it. 

"I will enjoy breaking you," Ruvik tells the man as he slowly pushes him away, to a different path. He's not ready to take the man, but he's willing to let him go a bit farther and see where he takes himself. Ruvik pushes the words he's saying deep into Sebastian's mind. Nestling them into his unconscious mind and making them a part of who he is. "You are _mine_."

The path Sebastian sinks into is straightforward compared to the mazes he's been setting up for the others. There is only one path for the man to follow, and it winds through all the places that Ruvik wants him to visit. All the memories and information the man needs to get to where Ruvik wants him. He's seen the false memories they have planted. Small things that are rewriting the man's past for some reason Ruvik can't fathom. He lets it be for the moment, because keeping Sebastian's mind open to change will be advantageous to him.

For now, it's time to give the good detective some things to think about and finish with the other subjects still wandering around.


End file.
